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Marvel Legends (Thanos Wave): Thanos Build-A-Figure by Hasbro!

It’s the final leg of today’s Marvel Monday trifecta and I’m happy to be putting another wave of Marvel Legends to bed! But this review is a bit of a cheat, because I haven’t actually completed the Thanos BAF. In a strange twist of fate, the Captain America from this wave never presented itself to me at retail and for some reason he’s been going for stupid prices online. Even Amazon, my normal go-to for Legends, has been gouging him at about $40-50. There are probably Legends figures out there that I would pay that kind of a premium for if I had to, but this Cap ain’t one of them. For starters, I’m not a big fan of his costume in the flick, I don’t like his Wakandan shield, the likeness is unusually bad, and finally I don’t really need his BAF part, thanks to the First Ten Years three-pack that came with two Thanos heads. I should note, that I also didn’t pick up the Iron Man from this wave either, but I’ll probably double back and get him eventually. In the meantime, check out this shit!

Only a Marketplace listing now, but Amazon themselves have had him for close to $50! And since this is going to be a quickie review, I also thought I’d take a few moments to talk about how much undying love I have for the Marvel Legends line and the way it also frustrates me to no end. Legends has become one of those monkey paw-type wishes come true for me. Hasbro has kicked this line into overdrive, beyond even my wildest dreams. Even when I thought it was going full throttle and balls-to-the-wall someone at Hasbro stood up, said “Hold my beer,” and cranked it up a few more notches. The sheer number of releases we are getting in regular waves is enough to make me weep with joy, but then you toss in the exclusives and the multi-packs, and it becomes enough to make me weep at the near futility of it all. The figures are coming in unceasing waves and the depth and breath of the character selection continues to astound me. I long passed 250 Marvel Legends reviews here on FFZ and I’m still hopelessly behind. I have stacks of them in the closet waiting to be opened. I could literally review a figure every day of the week and still not be caught up for over a month! Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want it to stop! But I worry about the bubble breaking. I’d rather have the line pace itself than crumble under it’s own weight. And sometimes when I see figures like Infinity War Cap or Mysterio selling for so much online, I have to wonder if it’s because these waves are hitting so quickly that some of them are barely making it to the pegs. And if that’s the case, why are whole other waves easily available at or below half price? I have no answers. What I do know is that I couldn’t even imagine keeping up with this line if it weren’t for the Internet. If it was like the old days, just driving to stores to hunt them would be a full-time job! OK, enough with the editorializing. I’m not very good at it to begin with, and I’ve got it out of my system. Let’s take a look at a couple of Thanoseseses…

Here’s the Thanos Build-A-Figure (with a different head)! So, if you aren’t keeping up, Thanos was first released as this Build-A-Figure and then shortly after he was included in the Infinity War First Ten Years 3-pack along with Iron Man and Doctor Strange. It seemed like an odd thing for Hasbro to do, until I got both figures in hand and realized that the FTY version is almost like a premium Do-Over. Both figures use an almost identical sculpt, with only two differences, one being the head sculpt, which I won’t be talking about. The other is the Infinity Gauntlet, which is sculpted in a closed fist here, as opposed to the open hand of the FTY version.

The Infinity Gauntlet on my BAF version has some issues with the stones, which appears to be either a QC problem with this specific figure or a wider-reaching molding issue. It’s not hugely noticeable, but it’s still worth mentioning. Either way, the Mind Stone just looks messed up. As for my personal preference on the hand itself, I think I prefer the opened hand. It seems like Hasbro should have been a sport and included two gauntlet hands as BAF parts in the wave, especially since Iron Man didn’t come with any and Captain Rogers only came with the tiny head.

The other main difference between the two figures is the coloring. The BAF features a duller platinum finish on the armor pieces, whereas the FTY version has a gold finish. The gold armor also features some really nice etched patterns in the gorget, which are not at all present on the BAF version. In this case, I definitely prefer the gold. It simply looks more vibrant, and from what I can tell also more screen accurate. This may have been another case of the figure releasing before design plans were finalized, but seeing as Thanos’ armor was gold in his previous appearances, it seems odd to have changed it now. The skin color on the BAF version is also a wee bit darker and the pants on the BAF are so dark they’re almost black, whereas FTY Thanos dons a set of chocolate brown trousers.

In the end, I’m happy to have both, but if I’m only going to display one of these Mad Titans, it’s definitely going to be the one from the FTY set. It feels more like a premium figure in every way and I’m not going to shed any tears over not completing the BAF just because of stupid Captain America and his Thanos noggin.

And so, I leave this wave with a bitter-sweet feeling. It’s always a shame when bad distribution and online retailer scalping makes collecting this tough. And it wasn’t just Captain America that made this one so hard to complete. It took a long while before I was able to track down Iron Spider at a palatable price. I may eventually grab up a loose Captain Rogers just to get him in my collection and complete the team from the movie, but for now I’m just happy to put this wave behind me. It features some great figures, but it was one of the most frustrating waves for me to collect in a long, long while!

Next week I’m going full guns with an entire week of Legends as I cruise through the newly released Captain Marvel-inspired Kree Sentry Wave!